THE DISCREET CHARM
OF THE BOURGEOISIE
(Luis Buñuel, 1972).
Buñuel's most popular film is also his most inventive comedy,
a metafictional satire with heart. That is not to say that he compromised
his sarcastic vision - only that here the uncomfortable truths seem
more felt from within rather than mocked from without. The film is dry
and delicious, and, most importantly - its provocations are genuinely
amusing.
To try to describe the story is a bit like parsing the grammatical
structure of a joke. Suffice it to say that there are three men and
three women - the ambassador of the fictional country of Miranda (Buñuel
regular Fernando Rey), his lover (Delphine Seyrig), her pompous businessman
husband (Paul Frankeur), her sister (Bulle Ogier), and a younger couple
(Jean-Pierre Cassel and Stéphane Audran). Throughout the film
they attempt to dine together at various locales, but they are never
able to finish a meal, due to a series of increasingly absurd mishaps,
including interruptions by the army, the police, and a criminal gang.
Buñuel has fun toying with, and subverting, narrative conventions
- interrupting the film with minor characters telling their dreams or
life stories, presenting sequences that end with a character waking
up and realizing that it was all a dream, only to be revealed as a part
of another character's dream, and so on. The sense of dislocation from
the world "out there" (the real world) is also evoked through melodramatic
cliché - the three men run a cocaine smuggling ring, a priest
(who is hired as a gardener by one of the couples) must perform absolution
for a man who murdered his parents. Interspersed with all this buffoonery
are shots of the six main characters walking down a deserted country
road with a preoccupied air - they are of course going nowhere.
Instead of his usual plain style, that generally relied on close-ups
and abrupt montage, Buñuel adopts a fluid technique with lots
of camera movement and varying spatial perspectives. Visually, it's
one of his smoothest efforts (the image on the Criterion DVD is simply
gorgeous). It's also one of his few original scenarios (Buñuel
collaborating again with Belle de Jour's Jean-Claude Carriere),
managing the difficult feat of portraying the humanity of its targets
without either turning them into monsters or blunting the satire. I
usually feel cheated by pranks that are extended to feature length,
but this one is thoroughly rich in significance and in style, and more
timely than ever.
THE FOUR HORSEMEN
OF THE APOCALYPSE
(Rex Ingram, 1921).
A sprawling epic following the fortunes of an Argentine family, one
side of which is French in origin, the other German, that ends up on
opposite sides of World War One. Most of the story has to do with the
French side - a feckless patriarch (Josef Swickard), disappointed in
his wastrel of a son (Rudolph Valentino) who gets involved in a scandalous
affair with a married woman (Alice Terry).
Ingram was one of the most artistic directors of the silent era. If
you are resigned to the usual excesses and longeurs in dramatic films
of the early 20s, the crisp editing, attention to detail, and nuanced
performances in The Four Horsemen will come as a pleasant surprise.
Best of all is Valentino, in his first major role. It is obvious why
he was such a success - the camera loves him, and he holds the attention
with complete authority despite his limited acting chops. The love scenes
with Terry have a natural quality, which really makes the passion convincing
- and this was a new thing in movies at the time. The picture was an
incredible success, a major hit worldwide that singlehandedly rescued
Mero from impending financial ruin. A lot of that had to do with Valentino,
of course, but the film also had some rather impressive war sequences
(blowing things up well was also a new thing) and an epic sweep.
The bad aspects of Four Horsemen (you knew there had to be some,
right?) were inherited by the writer June Mathis from the source novel
by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. It involves a lot of hooey about
the Book of Revelation (thus the title) in which a quasi-mystical figure
(Nigel de Brulier) makes prophetic connections between the coming World
War and the fiery horsemen of the Apocalypse - whom we then see galloping
about in the sky at various points in the film.
The picture attempts to convey a pacifist message, while contradicting
itself with this fatalistic theme of scriptural inevitability. At the
same time it resurrects all the wartime hatreds by depicting the Germans
as perpetrators of lustful atrocities and the French as idealistic good
guys. Succumbing to the crowd-pleasing ethos of valiant self-sacrifice,
the film piles on the religious symbolism - an element that has no thematic
continuity with the rest of the story - to the point of nausea.
In a way, it's a fascinating symptom of the confused state of mind
that must have been prevalent in the years following the Great War.
But although its spiritual and political perspective has not worn well,
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is still one of the more
accomplished Hollywood films of its time, notable especially for the
emergence of Valentino.
NIGHT MOVES (Arthur Penn, 1975).
Private eye Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is hired by a washed-up actress
to find her runaway teenage daughter. Meanwhile he discovers that his
wife is having an affair.
Although the film has gained a reputation in some quarters as an underappreciated
gem, I was sorely disappointed by this lackluster attempt at film noir.
To be sure, Hackman is never less than solid in the lead role, and some
of the dialogue (by Alan Sharp) is pleasantly pungent. Moseby was an
example of a new kind of movie detective - at the mercy of events rather
than in command of them. But the plot's twists and turns make no sense
(implausible even at first glance) and the acting from Hackman's supporting
cast is mediocre.
For one thing, the object of Moseby's search, and the subject of a
lot of fuss by the other characters, turns out to be played by Melanie
Griffith, demonstrating, in one of her earliest roles, that her lack
of talent was there from the beginning. (Penn seems to be aware of this,
since he studiously avoids giving her close-ups, or even letting us
see her face very much.) Jennifer Warren fares badly in a role that
is meant to be a wisecracking match for Hackman, but only sounds like
a boozed-up writer's late night fantasy. In addition, the film's prurient
preoccupation with sex comes off as hopelessly adolescent - although
I suppose it may have seemed daring in '75.
I know I'm in trouble when I'm paying more attention to the clothes
and hairstyles than to the story. Penn does lend the picture some of
the quick-cutting style that came to the fore in those days, but overall,
Night Moves - right down to its cheesy pseudo-funk music - is
about as good as a Rockford Files re-run.
CHANG
(Merian C. Cooper & Ernest Schoedsack, 1927).
One of the great fascinations for audiences of early cinema was the
opportunity to witness remote lands and cultures. The success of Robert
Flaherty pioneered a non-fiction film that provided educational glimpses
of foreign ways of life, while entertaining the audience with a story.
The adventurous duo of Cooper and Schoedsack followed this formula in
their first two films, the second of which was this fictionalized documentary
of life in the jungles of northern Thailand.
The story concerns a Lao tribesman trying to eke out a living for his
family farming rice and raising livestock. The theme of the movie is
man's struggle against the wild animals who threaten his livelihood
and survival. In the course of the film, the farmer traps a snake and
a leopard, and enlists help in a hunt for a rampaging tiger. The most
spectacular sequences concern an elephant stampede, and the efforts
by the tribe to trap and domesticate the elephants.
Made in the days before animal protection in movies, there's no guarantee
in this film that the beasts you're seeing weren't killed for the purposes
of the story. Neither do the filmmakers demonstrate much awareness of
the balance or interdependence of life. It's all man against the jungle
- a point of view that may very well have been similar to that of the
tribespeople (all non-actors) who participated in the picture.
The editing, narrative flow, and camera placement are first-rate. Occasionally
the spell is broken by cutesy intertitles that humanize the family's
pet monkey by giving him dialogue. For the most part, though, Chang
avoids the demeaning exoticism that would plague most of the jungle
pictures that followed it (the natives are generally depicted as intelligent
individuals). Visually spectacular (and quite popular) in its time,
it holds up rather well even today, and in the filmmaker's meticulous
craft one notices the seeds that would eventually produce King Kong.
VARIETY LIGHTS
(Alberto Lattuada & Frederico Fellini, 1950).
Liliana (Carla Del Poggio), a beautiful small town girl, is enraptured
when she attends the performance of a seedy traveling variety show.
She runs off to join the troupe, and because of her good looks, manages
to become the main attraction. The show's lead actor (Peppino De Filippo),
a much older man, falls for her, abandoning his girlfriend (Giuletta
Masina) and attempting to become an impresario with Lily as his star,
but she has other plans.
Fellini had been writing screenplays for a decade when he took his
first stab at directing, in collaboration with the veteran neorealist
director Lattuada. The partnership was apparently a happy one. Variety
Lights is funny, tender, observant, and briskly paced - an affectionate
and entertaining look at life in the lower regions of show business
that prefigures many of Fellini's later themes. (The film's convivial
flavor may have been aided by the fact that Del Poggio was married to
Lattuada, and Masina to Fellini.)
The story cleverly upends the conventional rags-to-riches scenario.
We think the film is going to be about the gorgeous Lily, whom we never
learn much about, except that she's warm-hearted and has a lot of spunk.
But the narrative ends up focusing on De Filippo's endearingly pathetic
schemer Checco, who pretends to be an actor of distinction with many
connections, but is hopelessly outclassed by the various male figures
who swoop down to try to take Lily from him. Despite his sometimes shabby
behavior, he has nobility of spirit compared to the bigger-budget showbiz
types who are his rivals. Too needy to let go of Lily, and too principled
to take advantage of her, his plight is rueful enough to be touching,
but not enough to prevent our laughter.
The film has a marvelous feel for the world of smoke-filled dance halls
and burlesque theaters, its backstage antagonisms, the constant problems
with money, and the faintly ludicrous pride of marginally talented performers.
Variety Lights is suffused with love for that world, and the
people in it. The last third of the picture meanders somewhat, and not
every joke hits its mark, but it's a lot of fun, and an auspicious start
for one of the world's best directors.
©2002 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
